The Hellenistic age /

All eras have a time and place, and the Hellenistic world's time falls between Alexander the Great's death in 323 BCE and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt's death in 30 BCE. Its place is the eastern Mediterranean world, stretching from Greece to India, with a satellite civilization in Sicily and south Italy. A historian can deal with it as a study of multicultural social and religious structures, as did this reviewer in his Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age (2008), or, as Thonemann (Wadham College, Oxford) has done in this excellent brief book, as a historical sketch followed by glimpses of various aspects of the period. One of them is Hellenistic kingship, and Thonemann's paradigm is Demetrius Poliorcetes, a charismatic military leader and a magnificent failure. Next comes Hellenistic science, with the polymath Eratosthenes as illustration. The book moves on to encounters on the boundaries with India, the Russian steppe, and Italy, where Herculaneum has yielded a Hellenistic-type grand house: the Villa of the Papyri. Finally, Thonemann picks Priene in Asia Minor as an example of the type of city that served as the instrument of assimilation, spreading Greek civilization across the Hellenistic world. A fine entry-level study of the Hellenistic Age. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --James A. S. Evans, University of British Columbia